Superman is one of my favorite characters, and while he has some
incredible powers and abilities it seems like writers and creators keep
wanting to tack on even more crazy powers. Ok some things I can buy, he
has super speed and strength which explains a lot of stuff. Yeah Ok at
times he could be almost godlike, but still. And can he breathe in space
or not? Depends on which era you’re reading a comic book from. And I
can accept the guy is smart enough to do instantaneous calculations in
his head. In fact a lot of things he did in the old days make sense they
just made it stupid buy adding “super” in front of everything. And in
one issue of World’s Finest he actually built another Earth…um, ok that
one sounds stupid but I never read it.
Here are ten powers Superman demonstrated over the years that really make no sense. Majority of these come from the old old days when creators didn’t care very much, but it can happen in more modern days too.
#10.”Leaping” Tall Buildings
Yeah this one goes waayyy back, to when the character first appeared. But I never got what Siegel and Shuster were thinking. Was a flying man so far fetched? I mean the guy could outrace a locomotive and bullets could bounce off him, but flying? That’s crazy! No instead have him leap around like a giant insect or something. Maybe the expression “leap tall buildings in a single bound” sounded cool then, it’s lame now.
#9.Tactile Telekinesis
I have raved about the John Byrne version of Superman, and while he did a good job of toning down the character buy eliminating the more idiotic powers on this list, he added one which was kind of silly. It was an attempt to explain how he could fly and carry heavy objects, by generating a telekinetic field that allowed him to move them with the force of his will? This aura also protected anything skin tight from getting torn or ripped.
#8.Shape Shifting
This is kind of high because I can’t find to many references to it. It happened in a silver age story where he is able to manipulate his face to disguise himself as an alien who had captured him. I think this was a case of “we need Superman to be able to do this, so now he can do it!”
#7.Super Breath
When I was a kid I thought this was a cool power because in the cartoons, he used it all the time! Thanks to the silly rules for cartoons back then, Superman wasn’t allowed to throw a punch in “Superfriends”. So he would “blow” them away. Now I see that it’s kind of silly, and while I guess it can have it’s uses…no it’s silly. In the silver age when he was all powerful he could blow away planets with the super breath! But after the Byrne era the power kind of faded away. I remember it took forever for Smallville to start using it, and they used it once!
#6.Time Travel
There was a time in comics when this was just something Superman could do. He could go so fast he could pierce the time barrier and go into any time period he wanted. I never understood how he (or Flash) were able to control where they went, but the creators didn’t care either. You may wonder, if it was that easy why didn’t Superman go back in time to change history? He tried in several stories. And yes it was even easy when he was Superboy, with him visiting the Legion of Super-heroes a million times (and no I’m not getting into the ridiculous stuff that used to happen in Superboy comics). Again, Byrne eliminated this power and it was for the best. And what about that infamous scene from the first Superman movie? I’ll discuss that at the end.
#5.Rainbow Power
Oh silver age comics, never change! Seriously what the hell? After encountering an alien spaceship Superman finds he can now shoot rainbow beams that cause crooks to immediately surrender. Not crazy enough? It turns out that his hands are actually shooting miniature versions of himself that contain all his normal powers. Um…..maybe “BatBaby” isn’t that bad after all. Yeah this is the silver age at it’s goofiest!
#4.Super Ventriloquism
This one is really stupid. It used to drive me nuts when I came across it in older stories. First of all, how is this a “super” power exactly? At least the breath thing I can understand. Yeah so apparently Superman has the ability to mimic any person, and throw his voice across great distances to a specific individual. What good did this do? Hell if I know. I think they also used this to explain how he could talk in space and underwater, but…no. Just, no. The worst part? ALL Kryptonians can do this so, yep, Krypto the super dog could even do it!!
#3.Super Hypnotism:
This is one I came across after I was older and man did I think it was stupid. Ever wonder how people were fooled into thinking Clark Kent wasn’t Superman? Well it wasn’t just the glasses, it seems Superman has hypnotic powers and somehow he is able to hypnotize anyone into seeing Kent as a frail old man. This was obviously thrown out the window when it was changed so Kent was the real person and Superman the disguise he wore. But before that hypnotism was used many times in the bronze age, and it was always stupid. In fact the one of the dumbest comics I ever saw had Superman not only hypnotizes Steve Lombard into thinking he was Kent (so Superman and Kent could be at two places at the same time) but Superman was able to disguise Lombard as Kent perfectly. I love when writers can’t come up with a good solution so they make some crap up.
#2.Electric Superman (aka Superman Red/Superman Blue)
I could talk about the stupid imaginary story in the silver age, but that was an “imaginary story” so I will let it go. No, let’s discuss the stupidity in the 90’s. Thank god I wasn’t reading comics anymore when this one came alone. It sounds like something out of the silver age, but this was the 90’s! I guess the silver age was what this was supposed to homaging. Only problem is that the silver age was goofy and fun, this was not. Deprived of solar energy, Superman developed energy based abilities which made him wear a blue and white containment suit. Yeah this happened. He could now also sense different kinds of energy, including the trail of radioactivity from a passing van, bolts of electricity and magnetic tractor beams. Then in a one-short story Superman was split into two beings each having different aspects of his personality. You know what, if you want to read more it’s all online. This is to stupid for me, and yes he eventually got his normal powers and suit back. But, electric blue Superman? It just sounds so dumb, like an odd variant for an action figure that comes out when creators are getting desperate! Oh this was an action figure. Never mind.
What could be dumber than that?
#1.Memory Erasing Kiss
I really wanted to focus on just the comics, but nothing Superman has done in those has made less sense than what he does in Superman II. And yes I know the movies are full of strange powers Superman should never possess. But truth is, I can deal with Zod’s telekinetic ability. I can accept Superman can create holograms and has a S shield saran wrap thing. I can buy the super wall restoring eye beams in Superman IV. And yes that includes the time travel in the first Superman movie, what everyone forgets is that he was royally pissed when he did that and I always got the feeling it was the heat of the moment that allowed him to do something so…stupid. Ok that made no sense but it doesn’t compare to the memory erasing kiss at the end of the 2nd movie…what??? It took me a long time to even get what happened in that scene, it just makes no sense! How in the world could Superman do this? What exactly was he making her forget? Is this a one time deal or can he do this all the time? Ok I get the creators wanted to press the reset button the and have Lois be unaware that Superman and Clark were the same person. But..couldn’t they have done it in a better way? A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE???
Consistency in a character? What’s that? If I forgot one comment and share.
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